Facebook sued for allegedly making private messages into public “Likes”

Two users say Facebook is too vague about how it uses private message data.

With all the pieces of my master plan falling into place, Ars will soon be silly with Likes.

Facebook is being sued by two users for intercepting the “content of the users’ communications,” including private messages, with the intent to “mine user data and profit from those data by sharing them with third parties—namely, advertisers, marketers, and other data aggregators.” The plaintiffs argue in a December 30 class action complaint that Facebook’s use of the word “private” in relation to its messaging system is misleading given the way the company treats the info contained within those messages.

Many of the allegations in this case are based on research done in 2012 by the Wall Street Journal for a series of articles about digital privacy. Facebook is far from the first company to use private messages to mint money. Gmail continues to be dinged for creating text ads based off of the content of e-mails ten years after the ads were first introduced. (And Gmail has been sued for that, too.)

This is from 2010, but without the "with" that is no doubt just beyond the crop, it's still relevant.

Facebook goes to lengths to clearly distinguish its messaging feature as “private,” even calling it “unprecedented” in terms of the privacy controls, the filing alleges. “Facebook never intended to provide this level of confidentiality. Instead, Facebook mines any and all transmissions... in order to gather any and all morsels of information it can about its users.”

Facebook’s privacy policies have been going through data aggregation creep for the last few years. The site was discovered to be handing over user data to advertisers in 2010, including names and user IDs.

The company overhauled its privacy policy 18 months ago to describe the liberties it takes with the information it collects—most user interactions are logged, aggregated, and shared (with anonymizing) to third parties, including data brokers and advertisers. Facebook also pointed out that it would share anything users ever made publicly available with apps, games, or partner websites, and deleting that information from Facebook would not remove it from those partner databases.

Further Reading

They do disclose consumer types like "credit reliant" and "resilient renter."

The plaintiffs describe how Facebook effectively “clicks” on links within Facebook messages, an activity that it doesn’t explicitly disclose to users. The lawsuit claims Facebook crawls the linked page to see if it contains one of Facebook’s “Like” buttons. If so, Facebook registers that private-message link as a “Like” on the relevant site’s Facebook page—a strange example of turning a private communication public. The lawsuit also claims that Facebook “uses a combination of software and human screening to comb through private messages” to mine for user data for broader uses, including selling to third parties.

The plaintiffs do cite the section of Facebook’s data use policy where the company explains what information it “receives” about a user as they interact with the site, including sending and receiving messages, searching, or clicking on things. But they argue that Facebook’s data use policy doesn’t make clear that Facebook “scans, mines, and manipulates the content of its users’ private messages... in direct conflict with the assurances it provides to its users regarding the privacy and control they should expect.” Likewise, the data use policy does not make clear that “Facebook will register the fact that a URL is communicated privately... as a ‘Like’ for a particular web page,” reads the filing.

For Facebook’s alleged transgressions, the plaintiffs are seeking more than $100 for each day of violation or $10,000 per class member of the lawsuit, as well as statutory damages of either $5,000 per class member or three times the amount of actual damages, whichever is greater.

The lawsuit is based on an older anti-wiretapping law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, as well as California state laws. Civil lawsuits over privacy issues have proliferated in recent years. Many of those lawsuits have settled, but it's not clear whether pre-Internet privacy laws would be successful at trial in barring the data gathering of modern companies.

I could not be bothered to roll a FB account, and anyone who does is kind of foolish to think they have some recourse against the scamming, credit card stealing, marketeering, privacy invasions and sexual abuse that are the hallmarks of FB. Clearly, these two did not read the Terms of Service they so willfully consented to when they signed up.

What? I agree about the part about marketeering and privacy invasions, but don't you think you are exaggerating a bit.

I could not be bothered to roll a FB account, and anyone who does is kind of foolish to think they have some recourse against the scamming, credit card stealing, marketeering, privacy invasions and sexual abuse that are the hallmarks of FB. Clearly, these two did not read the Terms of Service they so willfully consented to when they signed up.

There's so many bad things about facebook, do you really have to wildly exaggerate and invent things?

That only weakens the arguments of the sane people who get grouped in with the crazies

Yet another reason to quit using Facebook (and Google, because they do the same thing). I HIGHLY recommend that everyone quit using Facebook and Google. Instead, consider using Ravetree, DuckDuckGo, and HushMail. These are excellent services that have excellent privacy. There are many other privacy-based services for you to choose from, but these are the ones I like (as do a lot of other people).

I burned out on Facebook pretty quickly. It was neat to hear from old high school acquaintances for a few months, then my timeline started filling up with advertising and updates on friends' FB game progress, and the UI was so cluttered to begin with I just got tired of looking at it. I had a brief spurt of using it again when I got my first smartphone, and the mobile UI was cleaner, but i just drifted away from it again and never installed the app on subsequent phones. I still use Twitter regularly, and I used Google+ when it was new.

But I'm not the most social person to begin with, so I probably never used Facebook to it's fullest potential. And I went through a rough couple of years in my personal life and got tired of reading about how everyone else was having so much fun with their lives and families while I was working through cancer, money issues, etc. But I guess I can't hold that against Facebook.

The question I should have been asking at that time was how do I delete my Life account?

I could not be bothered to roll a FB account, and anyone who does is kind of foolish to think they have some recourse against the scamming, credit card stealing, marketeering, privacy invasions and sexual abuse that are the hallmarks of FB. Clearly, these two did not read the Terms of Service they so willfully consented to when they signed up.

What? I agree about the part about marketeering and privacy invasions, but don't you think you are exaggerating a bit.

Am I? I'm mostly speaking from personal experience here. I cleaned up a woman's computer who got served "teh malwares" from facebook linkspam, and found out she was actively communicating with a scammer at the time (via FB, of course). For another woman, I had to assist her with recovering from an account hijack (she had her number linked to a cell phone, which she burned, the number got reissued and the new owner of said number hijacked the account). So yeah, I have firsthand, seen evidence of most of the above without having ever been on FB myself (the marketeering and privacy issues, I gleaned those from the headlines more than anything ). Thus I stand by my previous statement... Oh, and don't even get me started on FB's sexism. Don't think there's much debate that any internet community is toxic to the fairer sex (okay, maybe pinterest gets a pass in that regard).

The things you're describing don't seem specific to Facebook at all. Those are internet problems that seem to happen anywhere people gather together on the internet. All the slimy underhanded stuff just uses whatever vector is most popular to get to people, and Facebook fits that bill. End users just need to be smart enough to not click on linkbait, whether on Facebook or in email or anywhere else.

Ooh, what's that bright flashing ad off to the side of this website that says I've won a prize? Must... not... CLICK...

edit: Not THIS website. Ars is so damn good about reacting to complaints about annoying ads that I haven't seen anything but the classiest ads here in years

I could not be bothered to roll a FB account, and anyone who does is kind of foolish to think they have some recourse against the scamming, credit card stealing, marketeering, privacy invasions and sexual abuse that are the hallmarks of FB. Clearly, these two did not read the Terms of Service they so willfully consented to when they signed up.

What? I agree about the part about marketeering and privacy invasions, but don't you think you are exaggerating a bit.

Am I? I'm mostly speaking from personal experience here. I cleaned up a woman's computer who got served "teh malwares" from facebook linkspam, and found out she was actively communicating with a scammer at the time (via FB, of course). For another woman, I had to assist her with recovering from an account hijack (she had her number linked to a cell phone, which she burned, the number got reissued and the new owner of said number hijacked the account). So yeah, I have firsthand, seen evidence of most of the above without having ever been on FB myself (the marketeering and privacy issues, I gleaned those from the headlines more than anything ). Thus I stand by my previous statement... Oh, and don't even get me started on FB's sexism. Don't think there's much debate that any internet community is toxic to the fairer sex (okay, maybe pinterest gets a pass in that regard).

Sounds like you work in IT or PC repair and routinely have to interact with people who fall for those stupid things... so that would put a huge bias on your personal experience without having used Facebook yourself. Do you assume the internet is only good for giving people computer viruses and Nigerian money scams?

So yeah I also think you are blowing those things out of proportion even though its not all roses at FB.

Yet another reason to quit using Facebook (and Google, because they do the same thing). I HIGHLY recommend that everyone quit using Facebook and Google. Instead, consider using Ravetree, DuckDuckGo, and HushMail. These are excellent services that have excellent privacy. There are many other privacy-based services for you to choose from, but these are the ones I like (as do a lot of other people).

Hey! I know you - you're the bot who posts the EXACT SAME THING over at Reason.com

Yet another reason to quit using Facebook (and Google, because they do the same thing). I HIGHLY recommend that everyone quit using Facebook and Google. Instead, consider using Ravetree, DuckDuckGo, and HushMail. These are excellent services that have excellent privacy. There are many other privacy-based services for you to choose from, but these are the ones I like (as do a lot of other people).

LOL you really just suggested HushMail??? Go google HushMail and its "privacy" adherence. (hint, they turned over people's "private encrypted" emails to the government)

Does anyone know of a program that can rip all my images from Facebook? I would love to keep all the images I've uploaded over the years but delete my Facebook account. I will need to recreate one due to being a part of the design industry, but I intend on keeping it purely professional.

Does anyone know of a program that can rip all my images from Facebook? I would love to keep all the images I've uploaded over the years but delete my Facebook account. I will need to recreate one due to being a part of the design industry, but I intend on keeping it purely professional.

Under Settings, in the General tab, there's a link titled "Download a copy of your Facebook data."

All sarcasm aside, I wonder how much validity this case has. How much privacy can someone realistically expect in most social media?

I don't see why you would expect any. You're using Facebook to communicate, ergo Facebook has your communication. If it says somewhere that your DMs or whatever are not scanned for info then there's a case though.

I guess this isn't ideal, but I also don't see how anybody could expect anything less from a social networking site that makes their money off of advertising - let alone Facebook. Nothing is private fully, and never will be.

"Many of those lawsuits have settled, but it's not clear whether pre-Internet privacy laws would be successful at trial in barring the data gathering of modern companies."

Our snoopy government agencies like the NSA certainly believe that past precedent is applicable. It will be interesting to see if past precedent applies to everyone equally. And by everyone I mean including folks that can't afford to give their representative a little something extra.

Does anyone know of a program that can rip all my images from Facebook? I would love to keep all the images I've uploaded over the years but delete my Facebook account. I will need to recreate one due to being a part of the design industry, but I intend on keeping it purely professional.

Under Settings, in the General tab, there's a link titled "Download a copy of your Facebook data."

I hate the way Facebook tied all the p2w games that will annoy the shit out of you and force you add mass friends. Did you know there is a limit to how many people you can remove from your friends list in one day?I was sucked in and ended up adding over 4000 people for Superhero City which I quit after EA bought them out. I'm down to 1100 and only 1095 to go.

I could not be bothered to roll a FB account, and anyone who does is kind of foolish to think they have some recourse against the scamming, credit card stealing, marketeering, privacy invasions and sexual abuse that are the hallmarks of FB. Clearly, these two did not read the Terms of Service they so willfully consented to when they signed up.

What? I agree about the part about marketeering and privacy invasions, but don't you think you are exaggerating a bit.

Am I? I'm mostly speaking from personal experience here. I cleaned up a woman's computer who got served "teh malwares" from facebook linkspam, and found out she was actively communicating with a scammer at the time (via FB, of course). For another woman, I had to assist her with recovering from an account hijack (she had her number linked to a cell phone, which she burned, the number got reissued and the new owner of said number hijacked the account). So yeah, I have firsthand, seen evidence of most of the above without having ever been on FB myself (the marketeering and privacy issues, I gleaned those from the headlines more than anything ). Thus I stand by my previous statement... Oh, and don't even get me started on FB's sexism. Don't think there's much debate that any internet community is toxic to the fairer sex (okay, maybe pinterest gets a pass in that regard).

Sounds like you work in IT or PC repair and routinely have to interact with people who fall for those stupid things... so that would put a huge bias on your personal experience without having used Facebook yourself. Do you assume the internet is only good for giving people computer viruses and Nigerian money scams?

So yeah I also think you are blowing those things out of proportion even though its not all roses at FB.

Nah, these were personal favors. When I did computer repair, Mark Zuckerberg was in high school and myspace/friendster were in vogue. I've moved on, thank god, but yes, seeing my idiot friends fall victim to this kind of thing I have to ask, "why do you subject yourself to this, this whole thing (FB) is just inherently abusive?" They usually say connect with relatives/old friends, but that doesn't really interest me since 1. I hate people, and 2. my parents/grandparents don't facebook either. The way I learned the internet was "you don't reveal yourself, period, because the internet is evil incarnate and you have to operate under a pseudonymous persona to protect yourself from the internet." I think that is truer now than ever. FB, G+ and Twitter fly in the face of that, so yes, I lump them in with all the naughty shit I saw happen to people back in the old days. I've been keeping score, and determined that they are indeed up to naughty shit, of a narcing and marketeering variety, thus my negative opinion has been reenforced thousands of times by media articles, personal observations, and, above all else, Maltego.

I just checked my Activity Feed, and compared it to a recent message I sent containing a link to a Huffington Post page that would shock me if it didn't have a Like Button and... no 'like' is present.

So what are they actually talking about?

When you send a link in a private message, Facebook automatically crawls the page you're linking to; and if it sees a Facebook "Like button" plugin on that page, it increments the page's "Like" count by one.

While this does seem strange, it can hardly be considered a breach of privacy, as it happens anonymously; there's no way for the outside world to tell who the one person is.

Yet another reason to quit using Facebook (and Google, because they do the same thing). I HIGHLY recommend that everyone quit using Facebook and Google. Instead, consider using Ravetree, DuckDuckGo, and HushMail. These are excellent services that have excellent privacy. There are many other privacy-based services for you to choose from, but these are the ones I like (as do a lot of other people).

I feel kind of nervous with these privacy respecting free services that you're describing. If they're free, how are they paying for their servers, bandwidth, etc? At least with Facebook and Google Mail you're getting a "free" service at the cost of privacy, and you can read the privacy policy and make a decision with respect to whether or not you use the service, but if a particular service isn't sponsored by government tax payers, supported by donations, a non-free service, or offered as a promotion for a larger set of services (such as free for personal use but paid for business), how are they paying the bills?

Likewise, the data use policy does not make clear that “Facebook will register the fact that a URL is communicated privately… as a ‘Like’ for a particular web page,” reads the filing.

If his were me - I'd post a shitload of nasty - creepy - very offensive - horrible links - just to see if anyone is paying attention.

Otherwise - yawn. Anyone posting anything online should expect zero privacy. Adobe - has several online services that work in conjunction with it's products - their fine print clearly states that ANYTHING that a User uploads to their servers can and most likely will be used for advertising purposes at some point - to showcase a given product. They state that by putting anything on their servers that they are entitled to a copy of said content and that you agreee to not file any litigation against them for using any uploaded material.

It's the same thing sa filling out a form for a sweepstakes or winning a prize - any information you give them can and most likely will be used how ever the fuck they want.

People are blind - ignorant and dumb if they expect any privacy in a public medium.

If you don;t want your shit public - stay the F off the Internet !!

Quote:

Many of those lawsuits have settled, but it's not clear whether pre-Internet privacy laws would be successful at trial in barring the data gathering of modern companies.

Why not ? Many copyright trolls are using outdated laws to their advantage in recent years.

Hell - it's still illegal for me to let my sheep graze on Boston Common on Sundays - I'm sure technically I could be fined. How far back does that law go ?

Also - you're on a mystical acid trip if you truely think all 1 Billion + Accounts that FB likes to toot it's own horn about are completely unique Users.

I maintain 4-5 FB accounts for my employer along witha co-worker - who has his own personal account in addition to 2 other acounts for his private business. At minimum that is 7 right there among 2 people and our place of business. I have many clients that have a personal and business account. many major corporations have multiple accounts - colleges / universities have many accounts for each department. We can scale that into the 1 billion account range if you really want to bother doing the math. The short is I'd bet ±45% of FB accounts are actually 1:1 - the rest are extreneous.

Also - you're on a mystical acid trip if you truely think all 1 Billion + Accounts that FB likes to toot it's own horn about are completely unique Users.

I maintain 4-5 FB accounts for my employer along witha co-worker - who has his own personal account in addition to 2 other acounts for his private business. At minimum that is 7 right there among 2 people and our place of business. I have many clients that have a personal and business account. many major corporations have multiple accounts - colleges / universities have many accounts for each department. We can scale that into the 1 billion account range if you really want to bother doing the math. The short is I'd bet ±45% of FB accounts are actually 1:1 - the rest are extreneous.

To say nothing of the number of accounts that are just generated by spambots.

You are both right, of course. That does not stop from trying to get a better deal with setting limits to non-privacy.

I do not understand that fatalism, "I can claim nothing" / "I am a miserable small worm" . My employer holds all the keys about my pay rise, and, still, I ask for a rise from time to time. And, you know what, sometimes I get it.

Does anyone know of a program that can rip all my images from Facebook? I would love to keep all the images I've uploaded over the years but delete my Facebook account. I will need to recreate one due to being a part of the design industry, but I intend on keeping it purely professional.

Under Settings, in the General tab, there's a link titled "Download a copy of your Facebook data."

Double appreciated, deleted my account completely. Well, it takes 14 days for the account to go from 'deactivated' to 'deleted'. Got all the information from my account in a handy little zip file. Had all my messages/videos/pics/contacts. Again, been meaning to do this for a while, can't thank you enough.